Facebook Inc (FB) Mobile Payment Plans Using Messenger Revealed

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) may soon roll over a new P2P money transferring feature, according to the observations by a Stanford student developer Andrew Aude. According to Aude, who keeps a track of the Facebook Messenger’s code through Cycript, a hacking tool for Mac OS X and iOS, P2P payments system had been included into the app’s code. The Stanford student also released the screen-shots to back his findings, according to a report from Techcrunch.

Facebook may charge a little for the service

With the new feature expected to come soon, users would find it easier to send money to their friends and family over the social networking site similar to the method used by the money application from the Mobile card payment company Square. According to Aude, there does not seem to be any transfer charge and the company might continue the same way initially, however, later a fee of $1 could be charged by Facebook to cover their own processing cost in the range of $0.40 to $0.50 per transaction.

On the basis of his observations, Aude is expecting Facebook to launch the new feature in the coming months, offering single payment attachments initially. Followed by a single payment attachment the company is expected to bring a multiple payment attachments as well. During the testing, only debit cards were working on the system whereas Credit cards and bank accounts were not accepted.

No words from Facebook

Facebook has remained silent so far over the revelations made by Aude, not even recognizing the discovery as valid or invalid. The silence of Facebook gives way to the possibility that the company does not feel the necessity to discuss the development or wants to continue undercover until the functionality is prepared to be launched out to the public. The company has already been criticized for segregating its messaging capacity from the core Facebook mobile app.

Mobile payment has become a recent trend among the social networking websites and Facebook has already revealed its interest in the area. In July, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that in the coming months there will be some overlap between Messenger and payments. He said, “The payments piece will be a part of what will help drive the overall success and help people share with each other and interact with businesses.”